


The Excruciating Pace of the Wounded

by Lemur710



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Some underage interaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 03:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17072594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemur710/pseuds/Lemur710
Summary: Remus and young Sirius have an odd little encounter.(Written for a "sleep disturbance" writing challenge.)





	The Excruciating Pace of the Wounded

**Author's Note:**

> One of the first fics I wrote back in the day, recently unearthed.

Remus knew something was amiss from the first moment he awoke because those were the dorm curtains of his Gryffindor bed hanging overhead and he’d gone to sleep in the body of a full-grown man; the two had never occupied the same space. He blinked once, twice, and then a third time, upon which he had to accept the rather unbelievable conclusion that he did indeed lie in his old school bed. He lifted his hand to see it was scarred and aged, weatherworn skin and too many moons etched across it. Not, then, the hands of his younger self.

When he blinked a fourth time, he found Sirius staring at him from where he leaned against the bedpost, but not Sirius as Remus had last seen him. This was brash, bold and brilliant Sirius of all of fifteen years old. “Something wrong then?” Sirius asked, his voice smooth and as yet untainted.

“I rather think I might be dreaming,” Remus replied.

“Do you need a piss?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you need a piss, go take a piss,” Sirius explained. “If you keep going on and on and you keep pissing and keep feeling like you have to piss, then you’re dreaming.”

Remus nodded, feeling strangely awed by this casual logic. “Interesting notion.”

Sirius sat on the edge of the bed, however, evidently assuming that Remus wouldn’t take his advice. Remus stared at him. He wasn’t sure this was how he remembered Sirius at this age. Somehow, Sirius had been far more...oblivious. This young man perused his surroundings with a shrewd, weighty gaze; not aged necessarily, but not untested either. And he didn’t recall Sirius being quite so handsome; at least, he didn’t recall noticing it at the time so viscerally as he did now.

“Let’s go,” Sirius said at last.

“Where?”

Sirius shrugged gracefully, took a bite of the apple he now held in his hand, and headed for the dormitory exit. Remus threw aside his covers to find his cardigan and robes in neat order, his wand in one hand. Without questioning it, he followed.

As they paced through the corridors, Sirius walked with purpose and none of the other students seemed to notice them. Nor did Sirius seem to notice that the compatriot on his heels was old enough to have tea with McGonagall. Sirius strode forward, his grey eyes focused.

If this were a dream, Remus expected that he might feel like his own fifteen year-old self, out on some supremely foolish mission with his good mate Sirius, but instead, he felt like a professor. And worse, a professor being absurdly and cluelessly lead about the school by one of his own students. This young man was practically Harry’s age and Remus could not separate him from the pupils he had taught, though he wanted to. He wanted to terribly, because there was something in the way young Sirius’s shoulders moved, and the feel of his hand across Remus’s when he grasped it to keep from losing him in the crowd.

“Here,” Sirius announced when they’d reached an empty classroom. Remus glanced around, but saw nothing of significance.

“Why are we here?”

“You wanted to be, right?” Sirus hopped atop one of the desks, grabbing up a discarded quill to play across his fingers.

“Did I?”

“I think so.”

Remus narrowed his gaze at the young man. Surely, Sirius had never been so handsome; Remus would not have forgotten that. He was unearthly, the way his features formed so perfect to the eye. At the very least, it must be some mathematical implausibility.

“Ah, yes,” Remus said, as if anything were explained.

Just then, Sirius leapt off the desk when a clunk sounded just outside the classroom door. He darted to Remus, shoving him back behind the large teaching podium. They crouched together in the narrow space, Sirius’s eyes wide and distant as he focused on listening. The mew of a cat and Remus recalled Mr. Filch, who must have been much younger, though he couldn’t remember him as anything but wizened and furious.

The same clunk sounded and the door closed, leaving Remus kneeling too close to a boy who was too young and smelled entirely too alluring. Sirius turned to Remus, his gaze close and intense. His eyes flickered down just once to Remus’s mouth and the adult in Remus backed away.

“I’m too old for you, Sirius.”

Sirius’s face split in a grin and he laughed brightly. Suddenly, Remus recognized him – this was the Sirius he had known! Sirius slapped a hand to his shoulder, shifted to sit fully on Remus’s lap, and let out a long, amused sigh. “You always were,” he said, and with that, he pressed his mouth to Remus’s.

Remus made what he hoped was a valiant effort to hold the boy off, but rather feared it was nothing of an effort at all and his weak shoves all too quickly became feverish grasps. Surely, Sirius was not this irresistible when he’d known him at this age. Surely, this could never have happened.

Remus awoke to see the cobwebbed ceiling of Grimmauld Place arcing overhead and turned to see what had awakened him. Sirius, grizzled and worn, stood in the doorway, watching him. Remus didn’t dare wonder how long he’d been there.

“Something wrong then?” he asked the shadow in the doorway.

As he had too many times, Sirius’s eyes held something weighty and calculating, his mind working visibly even if its conclusions might never be known. Remus watched him and felt a lump form in his throat. Surely, it could never have happened.

Without a word, Sirius walked on. His footsteps shuffled down the hallway, aged, slumping steps, the excruciating pace of the wounded. Remus turned back to the ceiling, and then closed his eyes.


End file.
